Editorial: A grotesque tragedy in Connecticut

The slaughter of 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school Friday was wrenching in its depravity. As reports from the scene kept getting worse, Americans couldn’t help feeling heartsick and anguished, with parents consumed by a desire to hug their children and be sure they were well. Grotesque tragedies bring home the centrality of family and the fragility of life.

“I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do,” President Barack Obama said in his emotional statement after the massacre. “The majority of those who died today were children – beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them – birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers ... who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. ... This evening, Michelle and I will do what every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and tell them we love them ... . But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight, and they need all of us right now.”

Next comes a painfully familiar cycle. As details emerge about Adam Lanza, the dead 20-year-old identified as the killer, we likely will settle into the usual back and forth over gun control, violent imagery and language in our popular culture, and what these mass murders say about our society.

But we resist the temptation to see what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., as an indictment of America. Especially with reports Friday that Lanza suffered from mental illness, we aren’t sure this event makes any sort of broad comment on the United States. Can’t it just be a comment on Lanza’s apparent derangement?

Yes, perhaps we need to have a debate about identifying and helping the mentally ill, or about making schools safer, or about reassuring worried schoolchildren that they are safe.